Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. — SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending. — Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network's first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States.

Inside India's CAPTCHA solving economy — No CAPTCHA can survive a human that's receiving financial incentives for solving it, and with an army of low-waged human CAPTCHA solvers officially in the business of “data processing” while earning a mere $2 for solving a thousand CAPTCHA's …

Microsoft breaks IE8 interoperability promise — Microsoft said the right things, then blew it — Comment In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 would: “use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default.” — Note the last word: default.

Opera grasps at straws with latest IE criticism — Let me say from the outset that I was not a fan of Opera Software's antitrust sabre-rattling a few months back over Microsoft's lack of standards compliancy with its browser. But Opera's latest complaints about Internet Explorer (IE) …

Is Skype Killing Itself? — Over the past few months we've seen a rash of complaints from bloggers and users about Skype. — Now I see they've decided to retire SkypeCasts (hat tip to Stuart Henshall). — I'm not sure why they would be doing this, but I suspect it is a pairing …

VPILF.com is already live — The Internet can agree on this much: John McCain's new running mate, former Miss Alaska runner-up Sarah Palin, sure is purty, as documented on freshly launched website VPILF.com. If you don't get what the “ILF” after “VP” stands for, go watch American Pie again.

Google to buy GeoEye satellite imagery — Google has signed a deal under which GeoEye will supply the search giant with imagery from a satellite due to launch in coming days, the companies said. — Under the deal, Google is the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery …

The death of the album — Good thoughts from Mashable's Steven Hodson, who describes the decline of album tracks as the industry has moved from vinyl to tape and then to CD. What used to be one or two not-so great tracks has reversed, and it seems these days there are only two of three decent tracks on each album.

Aaron Sorkin and Ben Mezrich Are Now Friends. — It turns out the Aaron Sorkin Facebook movie is also the Ben Mezrich Facebook movie. — The Sorkin project (with producer Scott Rudin and Sony Pictures Entertainment) has created a media buzz since its recent disclosure on Facebook.

Study: spammers mind their Ps, forget about the Qs — E-mail addresses with common names—and addresses that begin with common letters—are much more likely to receive spam than those with uncommon names and letters. That's what Cambridge University researcher Richard Clayton has detailed in his new paper …